tion of the laws and customs of ordinary life. There was now no merely human connection between the king and the people; he was unapproachable; he lived on earth it is true, but like a god in disguise, having nothing in common with the masses around him. It sometimes happened that, owing to some inexplicable decree of Providence, he might be deposed from the throne, and some lowly born usurper wrest the crown from him to place it upon his own head. But even when forced to abdicate, the legitimate monarch did not sink to the level of the multitude; and even adorned with the crown, the usurper was without the consecration of divinity. The former remained always a dethroned monarch, the latter a man of the people, who sooner or later was obliged to subside again into the nameless multitude from which he sprang, as an ice-crystal dissolves into the water around it, while the deposed king always retained his distinctive individuality, like a diamond, no matter what his surroundings.
What a curious paradox this phase of the development of civilization presents! The monarchical form of government, which has been able to hold its own from the earliest prehistoric ages to the present day, has long since thrown away as superfluous, those reasons for its existence which could be accepted by the intellect, and only retained those which vanish into nothing at the first ray of rational criticism.
The monarchy of today depends for its authority not upon its actual power, but upon its divine origin. It commands no longer by the strength of its army, but by the "grace of God." An army that is ready and willing to enforce the commands of the king is, even now, a most irresistible argument. But the monarch scorns to make use of it for this purpose. The assertion that the king re-
